Stephen Hawking on end of humanity and threats from near-Earth objects

2Shares

After giving humanity an end date, Professor Hawking now campaigning for asteroid deflection funding.

When Stephen Hawking talks, the science community listen.

Last week when he gave humanity an expiration date, he made the headlines. He told the crowd at the Oxford University Union that the human race won’t survive another millennium without escaping our fragile planet, or the world we call Earth.

Apparently, it wasn’t the first time the physicist has talked about humanity’s limit.

In 2015, he shared his top three picks for possible humanity killer: He put artificial intelligence at the top, followed by human aggression, and interaction with alien life.

This month, unsurprisingly, he is underlining another one: near-Earth objects.

Raising awareness

We’re not safe in here unless NASA and other space agencies figure out how to deflect an asteroid.

Last week, over 100 planetary scientists, engineers, and physicists, including Mr. Hawking himself, wrote a letter in support of the European AIM, the EU part of the joint ESA and NASA mission to survey NEOs or near-Earth objects, and study ways to deflect them.

They call the mission the international AIDA, or the Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment mission.

To raise awareness of the cause, Asteroid Day, a global movement, published an interactive online video (which you can easily share to Facebook and other social platforms) with Hawking speaking about the risk of a collision between the Earth and an asteroid.

Hawking said that one of the major threats to intelligent life in the universe is the “high probability of asteroid impact with inhabited planets.”

Also in the video, astronomer Carolyn Shoemaker said the more we learn about all these objects, including space debris from past space missions, “the more we can be prepared for possible impact.”

Now here’s the scary part. The letter from EU scientists revealed that of the NEOs found so far, there are over 1,700 asteroids currently considered hazardous. It is safe to say that some of which could destroy a small town, a suburb, or even a robust metropolitan area home of millions of people.

Unlike other natural disasters, like hurricanes and tornadoes, scientists said they know how to predict and (hopefully) prevent NEO impact with early discovery.

Hawking fan of Mars and moon colonization

“I don’t think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space.” — Stephen Hawking, 2001.

It is no secret that Professor Hawking has been massively promoting space exploration, not only to expand knowledge of our place in the Universe, but also save humanity itself from aforementioned risks.

In 2008, the renowned scientist said that humanity must invest in projects that explore the possibility of establishing colonies, not only on Mars, but also on the moon, the Earth’s only natural satellite.

He argued that the world should devote about ten times as much as NASA’s budget that year (or the world’s 0.25 percent financial resources) to exploration of the planets in the solar system.

Professor Hawking also called for the acceleration of NASA’s plans for manned mission to Mars.

During his lecture for the 50th anniversary of NASA, he said that “a goal of a base on the Moon by 2020 and of a manned landing on Mars by 2025 would reignite the space programme and give it a sense of purpose in the same way that President Kennedy’s Moon target did in the 1960s.”

Hes predictions are so gloom and doom …Sorry but mother earth is about 4.5 billions years and its not gone die just yet because he said so …I am a positive person inside and out and I love my kids and grand kids to love creators creation …

I think the world is far better off by America not putting any more dollarsthey have into NASA or space exploration. We know that both the Moon & especially Mars (which is literally akin to “going to hell”) are inhospitable & uninhabitable .The idea is of colinization there is simply “pie in the sky” to make us forget to use our common sense & use science & research money to better our alternative energy technologies & reduce carbon emissions to prevent further climate change & reduce global warming. Surely, any catastrophic asteroids (which are extremely rare) if headed this way, will be detected in enough time for us to deflect them or blast them, out of harms way.

Atheists, like Stephen Hawking, must know that God created man to live on earth and nowhere else. God Almighty is in full control of his universe and no amount of investment in crazy ventures will stop him from destroying the sinful world at his own time. Repent or face doom!